A Game of Dares
by cinnamonstyles
Summary: Between the ages of 18 and 23, Harry Styles went from a tortured, quiet musician with no hope of ever finding success to being the most famous face on the planet. Musician, model, actor. One thing has always stood in his way though, and that was his relationship with a bandmate.
1. Prologue

A/NThis is a pretty-much AU take on how One Direction formed and became a phenomenon. It will cover three stages (told in Volumes): before they were a pop band, their time on X Factor becoming a pop band, and the heights of their career as a mainstream pop band. Although this is a predominantly Larry-based fic, other pairings will pop up in the course of this five year timeline. Since the themes I'll be covering could be seen as offensive, out of respect I will not exploit any of their real life relationships.

**Prologue.**

One week into a two hundred and twelve day tour and Harry already needed a holiday. The slightly browned pigment from his last escapade hadn't even left his skin, but the moment he stepped back on that tour bus it was like he hadn't been away from them. His band. Another sip of bourbon, then another. The taste of alcohol and the sharp light from his laptop could almost bring him back to the long, sunny days he spent in Italy, away from the people, the screaming, the ringing in his ears, the desperate loneliness, the music… well, not the music. That had come with him. Just his laptop and a guitar, that's all he'd needed. It was a good month for him, it had almost been long enough to convince him going back on the road wouldn't be that terrible, that seeing _him_ wouldn't be so terrible.

Harry should have known better.

The thing about trying to live on a tour bus, there was hardly any room to breathe. You were always in at least four other people's personal space, so even though the person he was avoiding was sitting up front, driving the damn thing, when Harry sat down at the very back – a sort of L-shaped faux leather sofa facing a television connected to a PlayStation which didn't work – he could still just about see him. Why couldn't this be like a hotel on wheels, with separate rooms and maybe some room service and an above ground swimming pool? A really big hotel like that one in New York, the first time he and Louis had gone on a trip together.

"Fuck," Harry muttered, having broken his cardinal rule of not thinking about him and Louis doing anything at all together, slamming the lid of his laptop down in disgust. Niall, who was sitting across from him, shot him a look which he ignored. _Stop thinking about him, it's over, it's been over twice as long as it ever went on for, it wasn't even real, not really._

"Everything alright?"

"What?"

Niall used the beer bottle in his hand to gesture to the laptop. "Been a bad boy again?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "No, nobody's writing anything about me."

"Don't let Pimmy hear ya say that unless you wanna be told you ain't doing it right."

Harry couldn't give a damn what their publicist thought, but he didn't have much business bickering with Niall over something trivial like that. They'd never really had a fight before, except for that one time, the engagement party, but he fought with everyone that day. He hadn't been anyone's favourite person that day. He hadn't allowed himself to feel any guilt, because he'd been hurting, so why shouldn't he have fought back? Was it too much to allow once act of self-defence, one moment to prove he wasn't made of steel and nobody, not even Louis, could chew him up and spit him out like a bad taste and expect to get away with it. The fucking engagement party. What a farce.

"Want another beer?" Harry grabbed the empty bottle from Niall before he had a chance to answer and made his way to the kitchen area – about four feet away.

"We're out," another voice called from a bit further down, Liam.

"Out?" Harry smirked, pulling the mini fridge open. "Oh fucking hell, it's empty."

"As I said," Liam sighed. "We're out."

"You said we're out of beer. You should have said we were out of, you know, mouldy cheese snacks and other staple foods." The fridge door slammed shut. "When's our next rest stop?"

"Ask the driver."

Liam's voice may have been innocent, but there was something behind it, maybe Harry was imagining things. As far as everyone thought he and Louis were on fine terms, so why would there be a hint of _dare you_ in his suggestion? "Niall should ask the driver," he responded coolly. "He's the one who wants the beer."

"Actually, I never said I wanted anything-"

"Niall, go ask Louis to pull over at the next roadside shop or so help me god-"

"I can hear you, you know."

It was almost comical the way Harry turned his head toward the front of the bus in slow motion. It was the closest to direct conversation they'd had since the end of the last tour. Mind you, it had been a lot longer since their last civil conversation, let alone their last meaningful one. In ten or fifteen years' time Harry could picture himself sitting across from a fresh faced boy intending on ghost writing his autobiography, explaining how the breakdown of the biggest boyband in the world was probably all because he and Louis couldn't speak a damn word to each other. He was already planning what to say – "I guess we started our relationship as we meant to finish it." The writer was obviously going to laugh nervously because he didn't get what Harry was saying, and then would ask him to elaborate.

"Well," he'd continue. "We hated each other at university. Different crowds. To go from a year of hatred to forming a friendship, to being thrust into a pop group together and travelling the world? London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Tokyo, big cities with big stories, things were bound to get wild. We were bound to wind up where we started – our differences getting in the way. Start like you mean to go on, they say."

Hell, Harry would probably write the damn autobiography himself – he didn't need a ghost writer to come up with bullshit words for him, he was clearly a natural.

Unless he was cute, then maybe he'd keep him around. The boy he was picturing did sort of resemble Louis.

"Earth to Harold?"

"What?" he whipped around at the sound of Niall's voice.

"I think Louis is waiting for you to ask something."

Sharp intake of breath. Long exhale. "Louis," he started. "Could you make a rest stop soon since we are out of food and drink and are sort of going to be on this bus for another five hours, please?" It was his imagination again, but the last word seemed to send an echo through the vehicle, not unlike the sound of a tuning fork.

"No."

Harry wanted to respond, but it would turn into too much of a conversation for him to handle. Instead, Liam looked up from the magazine he'd returned to reading and asked. "How come Lou?"

"We need to be in Nashville in six hours and we already have a scheduled stop for dinner in a couple of hours. Snack shopping can wait."

Liam shrugged as if that was good enough for him, and Niall said something along the lines of 'fair enough'. Zayn in his blissfully unaware state of sleeping in his bunk even let out a snore which could have been taken as agreement.

The bus may have been small and narrow, but Harry was still fast enough to bolt past his bandmates before they could tug on his shirt to stop him. He didn't know what had come over him, but he was standing right behind Louis now. He could see how he'd decorated the dashboard – a pug with a bobbly head, a citrus smelling air freshener which looked like a lemon, a random sticker saying You rock!, and a picture of him and _her_ sellotaped above the radio. Louis was allowed decorate because he was the only one who ever volunteered to drive the tour buses, and back when they had all been friends they agreed that they'd never hire a driver, they wanted their bus to always just be the five of them. They'd never had any problems when it was just the five of them, they were happy - but naturally at times it became the six of them, and then the seven of them, and that was still fine. Zayn and Liam had stable relationships with girls, they got on fine, it didn't kill the vibe much. The girls Niall sometimes got attached to didn't cause any tension either.

It was only when Louis decided to start bringing dates.

"What do you want, Harry."

It hurt to hear him say his name like that. Louis kept his eyes on the dimly lit road ahead. He didn't sound cold, not exactly, but it was uninviting. It made him feel like he shouldn't be standing where he was standing. He ignored the feeling, he leaned forward, across the back of the bench so that he was close enough to whisper into Louis' ear. "Dare you."

"What did you just say," Louis grabbed the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went pale. "What did you just say to me?"

Harry yelled this time. "Dare you! I said dare you! I dare you to mess up the schedule, I dare you to go off course and find me a supermarket, I dare you to stop. I dare you. I fucking dare you to do one thing for me –"

They all almost heard the screech of tires before they felt the impact, almost smelled the smoke before anything went up in flames, yelled before they even knew what was happening, maybe because they knew Louis would lose all control as soon as he heard Harry say those words. _Dare you_.


	2. Part One - Broken Bones

**VOL ONE. 2010-2011**

**_"temptation is a terrible thing when I'm trying to keep you out of my mouth." _**

**Part One – Broken Bones. **

There was something comforting about the battered, leather bound notebook Harry kept deep in the pockets of his coat at all times. Whenever he saw something that made him think thoughts that were too dark for his head, he could reach for it and scribble down the words that came to him. Then, later, when he was alone in his room, he could turn them into something more by taking out his guitar. As he stood completely alone in the middle of a crowded campus square, something told him he would need this outlet more than ever.

The full list of people he'd spoken to in his first three days of university went like this: his roommate, who smelled a bit like cheese and didn't seem to have any intention of spending any time in the dorm; a random professor who dropped his entire stack of papers and seemed at least as lost as Harry himself was; and the lady who worked in the cafeteria. They'd been out of hot chocolate, so he'd bought coffee from her, even though he didn't really like coffee that much.

It was either his lack of interactions so far, or his lack of desire to interact, that made him feel so alone on the first official day of term. Maybe he should have just participated in those freshers week activities, mindless and slightly terrifying as he found the concept, he could have drank vodka out of some girls bellybutton and then been bonded with her for life. It wouldn't be so bad, she could have ended up being really good at reading maps or something and helped him get to his lecture. Harry was really bad with directions. This whole experience was starting to remind him of his first days in secondary school – on a larger scale, with surprisingly less people trying to send him the wrong way or give him a wedgie.

He started to consider if this was even worth the time and effort he'd put into getting accepted to study here. None of his idols had started their careers as musicians by studying music. They just were the music, they didn't learn to be anything, they became what every seventeen year old boy with a guitar aspired to be. They led by example, but hadn't Harry tried that? Hadn't he spent every day after school since he was eleven listening to his below average musician mates from class butcher every song he wrote? Even though they got slightly better by the time they reached sixth form and came second in their local Battle of the Bands competition, he was never going to make it big with them. They weren't destined for greatness, but he refused to believe that applied to him. That's what made him make the decision: he would at least afford himself a chance to learn and grow and even kid himself that he was talented by spending 3 years studying Popular Music Performance, almost two and a half hours away from his home. Given his history of not making friends easily, pissing everyone around him off, and homesickness, it was quite a risky choice.

Everything really pointed towards this being a bad idea. Even part of his audition had gone awfully. He shuddered at the memory, really hoping he wouldn't run into that guy he rubbed up the wrong way during the group exercise. This just proved he didn't have a way with people.

Harry had been aimlessly wandering, completely abandoning the useless map, and somehow ended up at the cafeteria again. He shrugged to himself, missing one introductory class that literally every first year had to take would not kill him.

The cafeteria was the first thing you saw upon entering the main building, it stood out as the only thing renovated or even built up this century. The other time he'd been there it had been crowded, but now it was a bit quieter – a few students holding takeaway cups, leaning against high tables or chatting in groups by the window, which to it's credit did have a lovely view of the river and the football field just beyond it, over the bridge. There was an unoccupied sofa, so he rushed over to dump his coat and rucksack upon it before heading over to the counter. His only acquaintance, the lady who sold him that coffee on the first day, was there looking pretty fed up with her life. A bit dramatic for nine in the morning perhaps, but at the same time he could completely empathise.

"Hi there," Harry said cautiously as he approached. He had this thing where he felt too awkward to ask for something that he'd been refused at a previous time, but he really needed to get over that. The coffee had been awful. "Erm, do you have any hot chocolate today?"

"You're in luck, curly," she yawned. He could see from her faded name tag that her name was Maria, and sort of wished he was wearing one too, like he had to on his first day of primary, so he could avoid ever being called 'curly' again. It was a nickname he wanted to avoid.

"Great, er, a large one then. Please," he added the formality hastily. "Cinnamon would be good if you have any."

She nodded and proceeded to whack at a pretty weird looking silver contraption. Harry tried watching what she was doing to see if he was actually getting some decent drink or if it would be more along the lines of that coffee (no, he was never going to let it go) but he zoned out a bit. He kept glancing at the sofa to make sure no one stole his coat (they didn't) or bag (why would they). Maybe he'd get thirty minutes of writing in that morning, and that could give him the courage to maybe ask where his next lecture was. He'd seen the music building before and it was a lot smaller than the main one, so the task didn't seem as monumental and frightening.

"Here," Maria said. "With cinnamon. Enjoy, curly."

The two of them exchanged a steaming mug for a two pound coin, and that was that for his social interactions.

Harry turned to go to his seat, now hyperaware that he could drop a steaming hot beverage on himself at any moment, but stopped when he saw someone sitting there. He exhaled sharply. Why would someone do that? His freakin' stuff was there, and some tall loser decided to dump his sports bag and – oh my god, he thought, mud destroyed football boots – right on top of his coat, and plop himself down beside it.

The boy looked up from the phone he was playing on to see Harry standing a few feet away, practically giving him the look of death he could imagine. "Oh, sorry, is this your seat?"

"Er," Harry looked down. He was annoyed, sure, but he wasn't great at confrontation. "Kind of. I mean, that's my… coat."

"Woops, should have said! My bad, my bad…," one swift motion of the boys arm and his stuff crashed to the ground. "There we go! You can sit, look," he shifted to the very edge, creating some space in the middle of the leather couch.

He had no choice but to shuffle forward and at least lean down to put his drink on the table. "That's okay, look mate I'll just get my coat and go…"

"Nonsense. Plenty of room. What's your name?"

How did he politely tell him he wasn't in the mood to make friends? "I'm late for a lecture."

"Funny name, that."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Harry. Erm, Harold." What? Who let him speak? "Harry. Harry Styles."

"That has a better ring to it, doesn't it!" he was still laughing at his own dumb joke. "I'm Louis. Are you a first year?"

Harry nodded, deciding that he really had no choice but to engage in conversation, at least until he'd drank up and had an actual excuse to leave. So much for song writing time. "Yeah. First day. You?"

"Hah!" Louis laughed. "I wish sometimes. I'm starting third year, total bummer. Mind you I could have been repeating second, that's how awful my exams went last year."

Louis was already proving too chatty for him. He didn't want to sit too close to this practical stranger so he opted for the armchair on the other side of the table. On the same level as him, he had a better look at him – his face seemed like one that was meant to be permanently cheery and lit up. He could hardly picture him mad or upset. His blue eyes crinkled as he smiled at him, and he was running a hand through messy brown hair.

"Sorry to hear that I guess," he mumbled.

"I got through it. What are you studying?"

"Music."

"Ah! A musician. I like a bit of singing," Louis was nodding.

"Really? I don't know many footballers that sing," Harry didn't realize that what he was saying probably sounded offensive until the words actually came out of his mouth. Luckily it was met with, surprise, another grin.

"Oh yeah? Know many footballers?"

"Ehm, just one. He was in my band when we were younger. He wasn't much good and then he joined our schools football team. Never hung out with him again."

"Well, then I'm glad I could be a pleasant surprise for you."

There was an awkward silence that Harry filled with avoiding eye contact and tapping his foot, and then Louis continued. "Tell me about your band!"

What was there to say about his old band? They were called The Only Proof, and comprised of Harry and a rotating cast of who could stand working with Harry for longer than ten minutes that year. It was hard finding anyone in Redditch as serious about writing and creating rock music as he was, both at eleven and at seventeen. Almost winning Battle of the Bands was their biggest achievement, if he didn't point out that they broke up about 4 hours later. "We sucked. They sucked. I thought they sucked and that I didn't suck. Maybe we all sucked," he shrugged. "I just kind of write songs now. They suck."

"I highly doubt that sir. You will find people in your year that want to make your kind of music," Louis said as if he'd been reading his mind, "and then we'll all be paying to have you spit on us at a gig! Give it four years, I have a feeling about you."

"What do you even study? It's just, I didn't see Psychic Studies in the brochure," he let himself make that one joke, he was getting the impression Louis liked his sense of humor.

"You're incredible," he confirmed with laughter. "I'm doing Sports Science, you know the thing athletes do to seem like they have a great college education when really they're just there for the chance to play football for college credit?"

"Do you always put yourself down like that?" Harry said, as if he didn't do the same thing.

"Like what?"

"Like you're not even aware of what you're saying about yourself."

"Just being honest. In case I don't make anything of myself, well, at least I'll have this." Louis glanced towards the boots that were lying on the ground.

"How can you believe in a stranger's future but not your own?" Harry was whispering, and he hoped Louis hadn't heard. The conversation was turning kind of deep considering they didn't know each other, and that Harry hated conversations.

"Depends on how much you like yourself," Louis was still smiling but it had a different air to it, Harry put it down to the eyes, they weren't sparkling like a few minutes ago. "Plus you have loads of time! You could make it at 80. Footballers have a smaller window of opportunity."

"Don't be such a defeatist," Harry looked at him hard before shaking his head. "Right, that's the most life advice I'm willing to give to a strange twenty year old man."

"A wise choice," the other boy nodded solemnly before laughing again. "Weren't you late for a lecture?"

"I was sort of skipping," Harry drained the last of his drink. "I got lost, so, yeah. Here I am."

"Glad I found you. Can I help you find your way maybe, since getting expelled in the first week is a record already held by Stephen Greene last year, and you deserve to be known for something way cooler?"

He wanted to say he was jealous of Steve at that moment, but that would be opening up. "Nah. It's not for another two hours. Music building."

"Well then! You can come watch me play."

"What?"

"I have a training match! You should watch me suck, and then I could like, watch you suck some time."

"What?" Harry blinked.

"At a gig or something! Although I'm sure you don't suck that much."

"You'd be surprised."

Harry could have winked, but he was a) not interested in flirting with him, and b) pretty sure Louis was not aware of any innuendo he was making.

Maybe he did wink a bit.

"Well," Louis smiled. "We'll have to see."

Harry sighed and resigned himself to having no choice. He was going to watch someone he just met play a bloody football match.


End file.
